Archives For
Preaching

In April of 1992, a jury found two white police officers “not guilty” for their conduct in the arrest of Rodney King a year earlier. The verdict sparked week-long riots in Los Angeles; at least 63 people were killed, 12,000 arrested, and one billion dollars of damage was done.

On May 3 (a Sunday), 1,000 US Marines and 600 soldiers were deployed to the streets of Los Angeles to supplement 6,500 National Guard troops already there.

It was the first Sunday since the riots had begun, and Grace Church (where John MacArthur was in his 23rd year as pastor) is only a few miles away from where the King beating took place. Already five people had been murdered in rioting only blocks from the church, and there were questions as to weather or not it would even be safe for the church to meet that day.

This is a long story, but I’ll keep it short. In 1878 Floyd Hatfield had a pig. Somehow this pig got a tiny bit of its ear bitten off or otherwise severed, or so Hatfield claimed. You see, on the other side of Tug Fork river on the border of Kentucky and West Virginia, lived a family called the McCoys.

The McCoys notched their pigs’ ears, to be able to identify them if they got stolen. When Randolph McCoy saw the notched hog in a Hatfield sty, he accused Floyd Hatfield of swine theft. The matter soon escalated into a bitter lawsuit. Randolph McCoy took Floyd Hatfield to court over the issue.

The problem was complicated in that the local justice of the peace was the honorable Anderson Hatfield. He found no evidence that Floyd had stolen the pig, and based on the testimony of one Bill Staton, ruled in favor of the Hatfields,. The case was closed. Or was it?

Bill Staton was later killed–supposedly in self-defense–by two McCoy brothers. Around that time Roseanna McCoy was courting Johnson Hatfield and the McCoys arrested the young man for bootlegging. The Hatfields rescued him by force. But then Johnson Hatfield abandoned the pregnant Roseanna McCoy, and married her cousin. Later, Roseanna’s three brothers killed a Hatfield (I forget which one). The Hatfields then hunted down the McCoy brothers, tied them to pawpaw bushes and pumped them with lead. The Hatfields were arrested, but mysteriously got away with no punishment. So, the McCoys used political connections to reinstate the charges. In retaliation the Hatfields burnt down a McCoy cabin. Two McCoy children were killed that night, and eight Hatfields were arrested (one of them hanged). Well, to cut a long story short, the notorious Hatfield-McCoy blood feud raged bitterly for decades, claiming a dozen lives from both families. Eventually the governors of Kentucky and West Virginia intervened, and even the US Supreme court got involved! Like I said, it’s a long story.

I have no idea what happened to the pig.

What I do know is that when family feuds turn violent, the end is never initiated by the feuding families. The dispute must be settled by the intervention of supreme powers.

I’m about to begin preaching a series of sermons in the shortest book of the OT, namely Obadiah.

While the United States celebrated her 238th birthday last Friday, many Americans are unaware of another significant anniversary taking place this week. On July 8, 1741, America heard what is often hailed as the greatest sermon preached on her soil from a man who is often hailed as the greatest theologian and thinker to minister on her soil.

In the years 1733 through 1737, Jonathan Edwards continued to preach in the Northampton pulpit that was now his own, having been bequeathed to him by his grandfather, Solomon Stoddard. During these years God had blessed Edwards’ preaching and ministry with revival in New England and beyond. Many were converted and others edified in their faith. Biographer George Marsden quips, “By March and April of 1735, the spiritual rains had turned the stream [of conversions] into a flood.”[1] Edwards himself describes the revival’s effect on his congregation:

The Chicago Statement on Inerrancy was originally drafted in an attempt to define for a generation of evangelicalism what it means to believe that the Bible is an inspired and inerrant authority. But now, 37 years later, there is fear among many Christian leaders that the importance attached to inerrancy is starting to fade. And when pastors lose urgency as it relates to inerrancy, they quickly lose the capacity to preach with clarity and conviction.

At The T4G conference Ligon Duncan (the CEO of Reformed Theological Seminary), Kevin DeYoung (Senior Pastor of University Reformed Church in East Lansing, Michigan), and Al Mohler, (President of Southern Seminary) explained how that change happens. Continue Reading…

Now I don’t want to be a knee-jerk dispensationalist-blogger and over-react to a passing comment with undue defense or anything, but I couldn’t help but notice that dispensationalism appeared on his list with some uncouth company. In the case of the missing OT, here are Murray’s suspects, and you should read this list while humming the Sesame Street song, One of these things is not Like the Other:

Young pastors and young churches (I belong to both categories) can be short sighted and lack patience. We want results next week, or we think God isn’t working. But as I have learned and know from Scripture, God’s ways are not our ways. One encouragement to this end for me has been reading and (thanks to technology) listening to church history.

I am currently preaching through Acts in the church plant that I pastor, which is roughly 7 months old. Preparing for Acts 11, I listened to a sermon by John MacArthur from May 6, 1973. There is one section in which he addresses Grace Community Church, explains where they are at spiritually and where he is praying that they will go. Here is an excerpt (it’s lengthy but worth every second): Continue Reading…

The theme of the 2013 Truth & Life Conference at The Master’s College is The Word of God. The conference explores the authority and sufficiency of the inerrant Word of God. Participants will learn more about how God’s Word guides and transforms the individual believer as well as the Church, for His glory.

If you are in the Southern California area, we invite you to join us January 16-18 to hear from our president, Dr. John MacArthur and noted speakers Dr. Mark Dever and Dr. Sinclair Ferguson. Please join us via live streaming video at www.truthandlife.org. Continue Reading…

Last week Monday we established the point that God made us messy. We asked in exasperated curiosity “Why would God, make humans naturally messy and disgusting, and then consider them unclean and unacceptable in the Mosaic Law?” As an example we cited the foot-shuffling chapter of Leviticus 15 and its unblushing legislation on various bodily discharges. I preached that chapter recently and am still recovering.

Today we want to proffer a second point: God wants us clean.

Yes, God is the one who made us to need fixing up (since the Curse of Gen 3). But God also reserves the prerogative to call our natural state unclean and unacceptable.

First, lets establish that in the Mosaic Law being “unclean” in not always linked to sin.

For example, in Leviticus 12 women are considered unclean after giving birth, even though this is not at all sinful, and in fact called a blessing and reward by God. Mary even offered the cleansing sacrifice after delivering Jesus, who was neither conceived in sin, nor contained the original sin nature. Having babies is not wrong, it’s just ceremonially sullying.

It’s like when my mother used to ask my brother and I to work in the garden. We’d get our shirtless selves all sweaty and muddy while enthusiastically pulling weeds for hours. Then, as recompense we would be called in for a lavish lunch spread and ice cold lemonade. But before we were allowed to partake in the cornucopia of cold meats and cheeses, we had to take a shower and put on a shirt. Why? It wasn’t that Mom was angry or upset with us. She was, in fact, pleased (and surprised?) by our compliance, and she was offering us a reward. But she still had unyielding standards of cleanliness.No one is allowed at table without cleaning up and putting on a shirt.

It’s the same with ceremonial uncleanness in the Pentateuch. Being unclean means that you are not allowed in the corporate gathering to worship with God’s people. God was not angry with the unclean person who had inadvertently touched a corpse, for example. But God has standards. “Be holy for I am holy.” You need to go get “cleaned up” ceremonially before being allowed into the gathering of God’s people.

So, being considered unclean for a perfectly natural emission of bodily fluid, seems at first harsh; but it’s not. It has to do with God’s picturesque standards of spiritual hygiene. Continue Reading…

Here’sa glimpse into the sausage factory of expository preaching. Recently my commitment to consecutive exposition was acutely tested. I tackled the chapter every seminoid dreads from the day he graduates, namely Leviticus 15 (you know, the heart-warming one about emissions and discharges of various bodily fluids). The challenges of preaching this sticky wicket are manifold.

First, the preacher himself needs to understand why there is legislation on bodily leakiness in the Bible. Second, he needs to publicly read and explain the text without blushing or evoking any unsolicited giggles from the congregation. Third, the life-changing gospel of Jesus Christ must be proclaimed from the text, and not just gratuitously or tangentially, but in a way that people grasp the connection and are moved to worship. And finally, application for today needs to be drawn from the Mosaic Law, which is fulfilled in Christ and no longer binding on Church-age believers.

No sweat.

When I surveyed how other preachers dealt with the text, I noticed a trend toward lumping chapter 15 in with a sermon on leprous uncleanness from chapters 13 and 14. So, most pastors tended to passionately preach up a storm from Lev 13-14 on the picture leprosy is of sin and Christ’s power to make clean the unclean–and then incidentally append a footnotish concession that chapter 15 provides another illustration of this truth by portraying a different type of uncleanness. A slight “ahem” would often punctuate the part fo the sermon where the unmentionables were mentioned.

I thought to myself, “Chickens! I’ll play the man, and preach an entire sermon on the chapter. With the courage of a seasoned expository janitor I’ll mop up the mess on aisle 15 with my dry wit.” Continue Reading…

Sunday. For the preacher, it comes every week, right on time, relentlessly. It doesn’t matter if you’ve had to perform four weddings and a funeral, or if the Greek in Luke took some arm wrestling to understand, or if you were in a fender-bender and two days were spent on the paperwork. On Sunday morning when the band stops playing, the congregation doesn’t want excuses, they want preaching. They (rightly) expect the preacher to be prepared. The sermon should be well-researched, well-illustrated, well-delivered, and well-worth-getting-up-so-darn-early-for. I’ve got no problem with that. But I do have a question for the congregation: How prepared are you for the Sunday sermon?

It is not only the preacher who has preparation to do for the sermon. When you know you are going to an all-you-can-eat buffet restaurant, you don’t gorge yourself on the leftover lasagna in the fridge a half-hour before dining out. Yes, the chef is the one with the most urgent preparation, but the customer comes ready to enjoy the meal. Sermons are best devoured by the hungry. This takes some spiritual preparation.

Ken Ramey has an excellent book called Expository Listening in which he gives a dozen tips on how to prepare for receiving the sermon at church. Here are three of my favorites.